Talk:Three Men and a Vampire
Audiobook This story was mildly interesting, although fairly simplistic in plot. It's nice to see HT experimenting with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen theme: reusing Victorian adventure characters in creative mixes and matches. Although Alan Moore's LXG is probably better known, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula did the same thing much better. Nevertheless, both series lost their footing in their third volumes, where each began to seem not so much like a coherent plot set in a self-contained universe, so much as long lists of "spot the reference" games.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 17:14, May 9, 2017 (UTC) :It succeeded in its purpose overall--a mood-piece pastiche with a famous guest star. I'm not familiar with Jerome's work, but it sounded consistent, so to speak. And the dog was not killed, which is pretty important to me. And yes, HT's foray into the recent trend in steampunk style pastiche of wrangling together Victorian era fictional characters worked pretty well. :I am curious about the sequel piece, so hopefully the book will be available on Kindle soon, and for the same reasonable price as Thirty Days Later. TR (talk) 17:27, May 9, 2017 (UTC) Three Men and a Werewolf Yep, it's official, the second story in Some Time Later is indeed "Three Men and a Werewolf". As all the good classic werewolves are under copyright, I will be very surprised if anyone as recognizable as Van Helsing appears. Maybe some tortured soul named "Larry" (last name unrevealed) who insists he's a werewolf. TR (talk) 01:20, May 29, 2017 (UTC) :Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night...JonathanMarkoff (talk) 16:15, May 29, 2017 (UTC) Series title I guess we should give this series the overall title "Jerome Stories" akin to State of Jefferson Stories. I just crammed through "Three Men and a Boat" today, and am scratching my head as to why this mediocre chain of mildly ironic anecdotes is billed as "the funniest book I've ever read" by some literary expert or another. Jerome K. Jerome is the author, and Jerome (Three Men) is presented as a self-portrait, so the proposed title seems foreordained.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 17:07, July 6, 2017 (UTC) :Let's hold off a bit. Three Men and a Werewolf may not be another JKJ pastiche (I know, I know, that's pretty unlikely given the premise of the collection, but it could happen). TR (talk) 17:47, July 6, 2017 (UTC) Characters My flipping through the original novel doesn't leave me with any notion that the characters are distinct individuals; they're pretty much a three-headed group entity like Huey, Dewey and Louie. Maybe HT will flesh them out in his interpretation.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 17:39, July 6, 2017 (UTC) :I am uncomfortable treating the Jerome characters as the same as the Turtledove ones. My opinion might change when I see the articles but for now I would prefer to put the red-links on the Turtledove references. ML4E (talk) 18:17, July 6, 2017 (UTC) :They are the same characters without question, and much more faithful to the JKJ version than the Greek characters in "Miss Manners" are to their classical antecedents. Or A. Van Helsing in the same vampire story as the Jerome crew.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 18:53, July 6, 2017 (UTC) :When I created the red links I purposefully structured them as each character's name followed by "(Three Men)". The Three Men can refer to JKJ's Three Men as well as HT's Three Men. I intended it to be the main article title, it was not meant to be a link to a subsection. If we ever flesh everything out completely, the link to a subsection will read *George (Three Men)#George in "Three Men and a Vampire"|George* which may someday be revised to *George (Three Men)#George in Jerome Stories|George* However, HT will presumably never use these characters outside of this short series, so subsection links would be fairly unnecessary. :One member of the trio is given the full name William Samuel Harris in the original novel's opening chapter, and is once or twice referred to as Bill, but everyone just calls him Harris for the rest of the novel. Since we have a canonical full name we may as well use it, though I suppose Harris (Three Men) could be a redirect to the main article (not to the subsection). See also Maxwell Ishikawa. :George is never given a last name, nor is Jerome, but it is clear from context that Jerome is the fictional personality of JKJ himself, similar to Jonathan Safran Foer's fictional Frodo-like version of himself in Everything is Illuminated. I suppose George and W.S. Harris could be obscure historical figures who were JKJ's friends in daily life, but I know virtually nothing about him.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 19:14, July 6, 2017 (UTC) :It's possible that more biographical info on the trio was fleshed out by JKJ in the sequel Three Men and a Bummel but I have no particular desire to read that anytime soon.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 19:16, July 6, 2017 (UTC) ::As I said, my opinion might change when I see the articles. Your intended structure seems needlessly complicated. It may be better to do the articles as Turtledove characters with a Lit. Comm. explaining the connection to the Jerome works. ::Mater of fact, the red links probably should go until you are prepared to actually write the article(s). They do not exist in the story article, after all.ML4E (talk) 00:02, July 8, 2017 (UTC)